


Growing Towards The Sun

by StillTryingToFly



Series: How Four and Seven Learn To Love Themselves And Stop The Apocalypse [5]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, Healing, Healthy Relationships, M/M, Mental Health Issues, No Incest, Non-Chronological, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Sibling Bonding, Therapy, There's A Tag For That, Time Shenanigans, all of these dumbasses need a hug, no victim blaming in my house
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22502356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StillTryingToFly/pseuds/StillTryingToFly
Summary: Part 5(?) of a series. The Apocalypse has been averted and the Commission dealt with, so now its time to deal with all the loose strings of trauma, and oh yeah their thirteen year old brother from the original timeline.
Relationships: Dave/Klaus Hargreeves
Series: How Four and Seven Learn To Love Themselves And Stop The Apocalypse [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1333189
Comments: 233
Kudos: 1051





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't mean to post this so soon, but I just couldn't help myself.

Anita Cochran (loose leaf tea drinker, dyslexic, life-long motocross fan) had been Vanya Hargreeves’s therapist for almost three years and had done a double take when the other woman had walked into her office for her appointment that morning. It always made Anita happy when she saw her patients doing better than the last time she saw them but the change in Vanya Hargreeves was perhaps the most dramatic change Anita had ever seen in one of her patients before.

The petite woman had thrown her shoulder bag to the floor and flopped face first onto the low couch with a muffled exclamation of, “You will never _believe_ what happened to me since our last session,” and then proceded to tell Anita in one long run-on sentance about her timetraveling brother, mask wearing assassin organizations, surpressed powers, and a great lesbian awakening (Vanya’s word choice not Anita’s).

“A lot has happened to you,” Anita acknowledged as she mentally scrambled to keep up with all the curveballs that had just been thrown at her. “So how are you handling all of that Vanya?”

“Better than the last time you saw me,” Vanya answered with a smile of her own. “A lot has happened and I’m not sure how believable most of it is, but my life is so different now I can barely recognize it and I’m glad.”

Anita nodded consideringly.

“That’s understandable. You certainly _look_ happier, do you want to talk about any of your experiences in particular?”

Vanya smiled, and it lit up her whole face.

“I fought in the Vietnam War with my brother, Klaus,” she clarified before Anita could ask. “Long story short we got stranded and we had to work together to get home and we actually got to know each other for the first time. Then we found out about my powers and made friends with Dave and the rest of our unit and we decided to hold off on coming back to 2019 for a while and when we did we met up with the rest of our family and took care of the assassins hunting down Five and everything is so different now.”

Vanya was different now too, Anita thinks, and it wasn’t her hair or clothes or makeup making her an entirely different person. It was the way her personality was no longer hidden under a severe depression and a crippling lack of self worth. Speaking of which...

“How are you feeling about your...powers?”

Vanya looks surprised by the question.

“What do you mean?”

“It must have been frightening to realize what you were capable of with no warning.”

Vanya made a face.

“I guess, but I mean they’re a part of me and it always felt like something was missing and now I know why. I was so unhappy before when I was taking drugs I didn’t need, now I’m who I was always supposed to be.”

Anita inclined her head in acknowledgement before continuing.

“And how would you feel if you’d stopped taking the suppressants and the only thing that changed is that you no longer felt smothered? How would you feel if you stopped taking the drugs and you still didn’t have powers, or your powers were so unobtrusive you just didn’t notice them?”

Vanya just blinks at her for a moment before biting her lip. Anita recognises it as her thinking face.

“If I’d stopped taking my pills,” Vanya said slowly. “And the only thing that changed was that I no longer felt smothered it would have been hard to get my other siblings to take me seriously with the exception of Klaus. He got to know me before we knew about my powers, he knows I can handle myself but the others...” Vanya trailed off, unsure.

Anita just shook her head slightly.

"Not how would they feel about you Vanya. How would _you_ feel? If you still didn’t have powers?”

“Left out, I guess,” Vanya said hesitantly. “When I was a kid, I always felt like I didn’t belong because there wasn’t anything special about me, and even when I grew up I never really fit with anyone else either so it couldn’t be entirely my sibling’s fault. I’m not depressed anymore and I was making friends once I was off my pills, so it might have gone better this time.”

Vanya doesn’t sound convinced.

Anita found herself frowning again.

“Have you ever watched Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood Vanya?”

Vanya looks surprised by the non sequitur.

“No, I haven’t. It’s a children’s television show, right?”

“It is,” Anita confirmed. “Fred Rogers created the show as a way to give young children uplifting messages and educating them about life. Lessons on making mistakes, getting along with others, and also teaching them that they’re special and unique. He wanted children to understand that they have value _as they are_ , not because of what they were capable of or not.”

Vanya’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Say for instance, someone thinks their own worth to the world is that they are smart, so them being smart is the basis of their self esteem, and one day they make a mistake or realize they aren’t as smart as other people and that one trait is the basis of their self esteem and the whole structure can come crumbling down. Because they’ve based their entire self worth on this one trait they are left asking ‘what am I worth if I’m not smart?’ Fred Rogers wanted children to know that they were special just by being themselves, as hokey as that sounds to an adult, it’s important for us to understand, because you are not replaceable. You don’t have to accomplish things to justify your existence, you are fundamentally lovable just the way you are, with or without powers Vanya.”

Vanya opened her mouth, struggled for something to say and closed it again.

Anita leaned forward and gently touched Vanya's knee.

"I think that's enough for today."


	2. I'm Singing Our Song But You've forgotten The Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five adjusts to 2019. Sort of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea where this came from; I'd planned something else entirely. But by all means: enjoy!

Five(13)

Vanya didn’t have bangs anymore and it kept throwing Five for a loop. It was hardly the biggest change any of them had undergone and yet Five was having an easier time coming to terms with Luther having the proportions of a funhouse mirror than the change in Vanya’s appearance.

When the strange adult version of Klaus had first yelled for Vanya, Five had felt something like fear flutter in his stomach. Vanya had always been his favorite sibling, what had happened to her in the seventeen years he had been gone?

When she’d first come barreling down the stairs yelling for Klaus, asking what was wrong at the top of her lungs, Five had actually pulled back in surprise. He could see his brother in this lanky man with tattoos and wild curls, but the woman who jumped the last three stairs and skidded to a halt next to Klaus bore only the most superficial resemblance to his sister.

“What happened? What’s wrong?” She’d gasped out as soon as she’d landed. The question had been directed at Klaus; she hadn’t turned to look at Five standing stock still in the parlor until Klaus pointed at him wordlessly.

Vanya had raised her eyebrows in surprise but otherwise didn’t react to his sudden reappearance in their childhood home.

“Five? What happened? I thought you said you pulled your physical manifestation outside of the flow of time so you wouldn’t have to worry about shifting back? Did something go wrong?”

_What!The!Hell!_

“I don’t think that’s _our_ Five, Van,” Klaus said with a manic grin spreading slowly across his face. Without warning he spun around and pointed dramatically up the stairs.

_Seriouslywhatthefuck!!!_

“Haha! Take that you little jerk! I was RIGHT! There _are_ two of you!”

And that was how Five learned there was an older version of himself from an alternate timeline in the Academy. An alternate timeline where his favorite sister brought about the Apocalypse with Her Powers! This version of himself was currently pacing the parlor like a caged tiger while Grace looked him over for injuries and his siblings did a bad job of pretending not to stare at him.

“Do you have any idea what this changes in terms of physics?” The older version of him was saying. “How do we even check on something like this? DNA? Is he even from this dimension or did he hop over from his world when he meant to jump through time? Is he even real?!”

Five was bristling like an angry cat and was just preparing a cutting retort about not talking about him like he wasn’t there when Luther spoke over him in a tired voice.

“He’s real Five,” says Luther. “I gave everyone non-digestible trackers when we were kids and now there’s two of yours.”

“You did _what_ ,” asks the grumpy looking man with the scars (Diego, Vanya says this is Diego and Five has no trouble believing that at all).

“Guys, that isn’t important, what’s important is that I was right,” Klaus crows from where he’s sitting on the cabinet gently bumping his bare foot against the door. There is a man sitting next to him with their fingers twined together and watching Klaus with the softest expression Five thinks he has maybe ever seen.

“I said we might end up with two Number Fives and I was _right!”_ Klaus continued with a huge shit eating grin stretched across his face. “Thank god Vanya’s energy bendy thing worked and gave you enough energy to change your body Five or else you’d be stuck in a tiny body and we wouldn’t be able to tell you two apart!”

“Shut up Klaus!”

“Shut up Klaus!”

Both Fives spoke at once and instead of being chastised even a little bit Klaus started giggling so hard he had to put his face in the stranger’s shoulder to muffle his amusement of the situation.

“Five,” Vanya said in a reproving tone, the one she only ever used when he had gone too far and upset her, and it made both versions of Number Five snap their mouths closed.

Vanya waited a moment to make sure neither of them was about to start up again before she went on.

“I know this is a lot for both of you to take in right now, but the last thing we need right now is a fight. Five,” she said, turning to the older version. “You were looking for proof that we prevented the Apocalypse,” she stopped and gestured to the Five sitting mulishly on the couch. “Well there he is. You Jumped forward and got stuck in the Apocalypse, _he_ Jumped forward and got stuck in April Fool’s day. The world hasn’t ended, and now we have proof. This is a good thing, sure it's weird, but no one in this family is even remotely normal, so we’ll have to take it as a win.”

Vanya smiled sadly at him before turning to the thirteen year old Five who was glowering like a molting vulture next to her on the couch.

“Hello Five, I’m sorry for the confusing welcome, but there was a slight SNAFU with the first bit of time travel and Five--” she gestured to the Five who was now behind the bar fixing himself a drink “--looked like he was about thirteen. He only got that fixed the other day, and I thought you were him.”

Five glowered at that but nodded, it made a sort of sense that his siblings had prevented the end of the world, and that a version of him had helped them but...

“Where’s Ben?” Five asked looking as if expecting Ben to pop out from behind his favorite armchair. “And Pogo and Dad?”

“Pogo is working on a project at the moment,” Diego said quickly, not quite meeting Five’s eye.

“Dad died just over a week ago,” Luther said dully, looking down at his shoes.

“And Ben is a little more complicated,” Vanya said quietly pulling his hand between hers and giving it a gentle squeeze.

Five felt his stomach swoop with fear.

“What do you mean, more complicated?”

Vanya just turned to Klaus and raised an eyebrow.

Klaus leaned forward and waved one glowing blue hand in front of him, for a moment nothing happened, but then the ghostly form of Benjamin Hargreeves, flickered into view long enough to wave a hand at a startled looking Five.

“Hey Five, how’s it going?” Ben asks before he vanishes again. Vanishes because he is a ghost. Because Ben is dead.

It takes Five a few seconds to realize that his mouth is hanging open like a fish and once he does he snaps his jaw closed and turned back to look at Vanya.

“What the hell happened to you all?”

* * *

Dad was dead. Five wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, when he’d run out the door two hours ago his biggest frustration with Reginald Hargreeves was that the man was restrictive and holding Five back, on the other hand Five had just been given the condensed version of what had been done to Vanya her whole life **_(POWERS?!)_ ** as well as the circumstances that led to Ben being a ghostly specter hanging around Klaus and Five felt the fury bubbling up inside him.

Five had been given quite a lot to think about, not the least of which was the adult version of himself that was apparently a raging alcoholic. Klaus had also said something about a mannequin wife but Five was refusing to believe on account of it coming out of Klaus’s mouth.

Five pursed his lips as he took in the wardrobe filled with navy shorts and argyle sweater vests identical to the ones he was currently wearing. Behind him the dresser stood with all of its drawers hanging open, tidiness a casualty of his search for the one set of street clothes he owned. 

The Umbrella Academy had done a photo shoot for a teen magazine a few months before he’d left and they’d been allowed to pick and keep one outfit from the clothes provided. Five had picked a comfortable pair of jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt but it seemed that his jeans they had both been thrown out some time in the intervening seventeen years.

Scowling to himself Five grabbed a set of exercise clothes and stomped the whole way to the bathroom. Angrily turning the shower as hot as it would go Five considered everything that had happened since he had left dinner two hours ago (seventeen years ago).

Vanya was the same height she had been as a child, and her hair was still brown, and she still followed every move he made with huge brown eyes but everything else about her was different. The long heavy locks have been shorn above her shoulders and styled, her eyes are lined with winged eyeliner and she was wearing an all white jumpsuit. The clothes were such a departure from what he was used to Vanya wearing but it was her face that really had him floundering.

Adult Vanya was...animated in a way he’d never seen before and her wide smile was so different from the small shy smiles he’d always worked so hard to coax from her.

Alone in the bathroom, with the shower running loudly enough to drown out the noise Five allowed himself to cry for the seventeen years he had lost to his own arrogance.

* * *

Vanya was waiting for him on the landing with a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich and a glass of milk.

“Thanks,” Five muttered grabbing the sandwich off the plate and taking a huge bite.

Vanya smiled and leaned against the railing while she watched him eat.

“How are you feeling?” She asked when he paused long enough to take a breath.

“I’m fine,” Five said with a shrug, refusing to let himself think about how he was avoiding making eye contact with Vanya.

“That’s good,” Vanya said encouragingly. “I have a concert tonight and I have enough tickets for everyone if you want to get out of the house for a bit.”

Five shrugged. “Okay, beats staying here alone with Grace.”

Vanya actually snorted at that.

“Five, if you’d said ‘no’ Luther, Diego, _and_ Allison would have stayed behind with you. The only reason I would have gone is because I'm the first chair and the soloist tonight.” 

Five couldn’t help but smile at the pride in her voice; his sister was an amazing musician, it was good to hear she’d finally come into her own, then the first part of her sentence clicked in his brain.

“Wait, why would _they_ stay back?”

Vanya raised her eyebrows at him like he’d just asked the dumbest question she’d heard all day.

“Because you’re our brother and we missed you,” Vanya said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Five was struggling for a rebuttal when Vanya plowed on. “Besides I think Allison is just itching for a chance to smother someone in her maternal instincts and I’m too old for that.”

“Maternal instincts,” Five said flatly, staring at Vanya with his brows arched in disbelief. “Allison has...maternal instincts?”

“Mm-hm,” Vanya hummed. “Your niece’s name is Claire and she’s four years old.”

Five found himself blinking in surprise. “Is she here?” He asked, turning around as if he expected a child to pop out of the shadows.

Vanya suddenly looked awkward.

“Ah, no. Allison and her husband are getting a divorce and the judge...was concerned about Allison’s...” Vanya trailed off awkwardly.

“Habit of Rumoring everyone in sight into doing everything she wants?” Five supplied dryly.

Vanya winced, but nodded quickly. “Yeah, that.”

They sat in silence for a moment before Vanya spoke again.

“To be fair, Allison is trying not to use her Rumors anymore, but to be fair to her ex, it wasn’t exactly an unfounded concern.”

Five snorted. “ _No, really?_ ” Five said his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Vanya smacked his shoulder lightly. “Be nice! She’s trying to grow out of the bad habits our childhood trauma left us with.”

Five opened his mouth, couldn’t think of how to respond to that (mostly because it was probably right), and closed it again.

Vanya looked at him and smiled sadly before hopping off the railing.

“Come on! Let’s go raid Klaus’s closet; he still has some stuff from when he was a teenager that should fit you.”

Five must have made a truly impressive face at that because Vanya laughed so hard she almost doubled over.

“He wore a lot of black as a teenager, and I promise we’ll avoid anything with glitter.”

Five pursed his lips and glanced down at the green athletic gear he was currently wearing. He supposed that at worst he could wear his academy uniform to the performance.

Five heaved a put upon sigh and followed Vanya down the hall to Klaus’s bedroom which had somehow gotten even more chaotic in the intervening seventeen years.

“ _Fine_ ,” he said in an exasperated voice. “I suppose I’ll have to adjust.”

* * *

It was an adjustment; of course it was, everything had changed in the blink of an eye as far as Five was concerned. But it was an adjustment for his siblings as well. Vanya had an apartment in the city but she was looking into buying a house, something big in the nicer part of town. When Diego had asked her why she wanted something with so much space she’d rolled her eyes at him.

“So I can have the room farthest away from Dave and Klaus when they start going at it like rabbits,” Vanya said dryly over the open house listings in the paper.

Like it was a forgone conclusion that Klaus and Dave (the soldier that Klaus had fallen in love with when he and Vanya HAD TIME TRAVELED TO THE FUCKING VIETNAM WAR!) would be staying with her.

“Besides Five will need a work space besides his bedroom,” Vanya had continued and Five had frozen for a moment, because...what if she’d meant the other Five?

“Any thoughts on if you’d like to go to school or just get your GED so you can go straight to University whenever you want to?” Vanya had asked him suddenly, and Five frowned in confusion.

“I’ll probably get my GED,” Five said slowly. “Why?”

Vanya shrugged. “Some of these places are in lackluster school districts, I have to think about that sort of thing now.”

She was including him in her house hunting plans; Five felt like he could breathe again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment! This fic will have more audience participation than the rest of the series! What do you want to see? What did you like? I am open to suggestions!


	3. What is in a name?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crying, and coffee, and dogs! Oh my!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have no idea how long this is going to be, and the whole thing will be written out of order so if it starts getting confusing please let me know!

**Vanya**

_ “Your trauma is part of you, and it always will be. How you choose to react now is entirely up to you.” _

Anita’s words reverberated through Vanya’s head as she drove back to the Academy after her most recent session with the windshield wipers moving double time to keep up with the sudden downpour.

_ “Wanting to distance yourself from the place where the trauma occurred is a common wish for many abuse survivors, as is a simultaneous reluctance to leave what is familiar, even if the familiar is what is hurting you.” _

Vanya felt her breathing pick up and found herself reaching--even now, a year since the last time she’d taken one--for the pills she’d had since she was four years old. Realizing what she was doing Vanya jerked her hand back as if burned.

_ “I can’t tell you what the right course of action is here Vanya, you will need to decide that for yourself.” _

Vanya was crying, big fat tears pouring down her face as she pulled the car to the shoulder of the road and cut the ignition. Covering her face with both her hands she cried until she felt like there were no tears left inside her.

It felt ridiculous; she was safe, her abuser was dead and he could never force her to take one of those horrible pills again. She had taken the Commission out herself, protected her family from them, and Klaus had saved the world from  _ her _ . Everything was supposed to be  _ fine _ , so why was she so afraid of the idea of moving into a new house?

She knew she hidden her fear from everyone, even Dave and Klaus, but she could feel her resolve cracking. She kept finding things wrong with all the houses she’d looked into, things she knew she could work around or fix and she wasn’t even sure why she was holding back. She’d lived on her own for over ten years, why did the idea of moving now scare her so badly?

Wiping at her face Vanya reached into her bag and pulled out one of the water bottles she’d tossed in that morning and drained it in one go. Leaning back in her seat she opened the second one and drank it slowly, attempting the breathing exercises Anita had taught her when Vanya told her she no longer felt comfortable taking pills.

She could do this. She had lived through Reginald Hargreeves’ reign of terror and fought in the Tet Offensive. She was the First Chair at the Icarus Theatre and the Harbinger of the Apocalypse, she could buy a house.

Tossing both of the empty water bottles into the empty seat next to her Vanya wiped her eyes one more time and turned the car back on pulling into the flow of traffic determined not to let the rest of her day by ruined by her crying jag.

* * *

Little Five was scowling as he write aggressively on one of the blackboards he’d dragged into the library when Vanya walked in after her therapy session and subsequent breakdown. Knowing better than to interrupt when he was in one of his moods she picked up a graphic novel that Dave had left out and plopped down in an armchair to read. Ten minutes later Five threw the chalk down and spun to look at her.

“I need caffeine, is Griddy’s still standing?” Five asked with a mulish expression and his hands thrust into his pockets.

Vanya looked over the top of her graphic novel and arched an eyebrow at her younger brother.

Allison had dragged him on a shopping trip a few days before to get him clothes that didn’t come from their hellish childhood. Five had picked mostly dark nondescript clothes similar to the dark grey turtleneck he was currently wearing. Apparently the whole trip had lasted less than an hour and Vanya couldn’t help but wonder if it was because out of all of them Five had always gotten along with Two and Three least harmoniously or because Klaus had invited himself along and driven the other two up the wall.

“Griddy’s is an absolute shithole, if we’re getting coffee we’re going somewhere nice,” she said as she set the comic down and got out of her chair.

Five grimaced at her assessment of their childhood haunt but nodded.

“As long as you’re buying,” he said before giving her a wicked grin. “Race you to the car!” He called as he vanished in a flash of blue.

Vanya couldn’t help but laugh as she ran out of the library.

* * *

The coffee shop was closer to Vanya’s apartment than the Academy and it gave Little Five plenty of opportunity to look around the city he had grown up in but never really seen. Once they arrived Vanya sent Five to secure the good armchairs in the corner while she ordered their coffee. Knowing Allison, Diego, and Luther would all disapprove of giving actual thirteen year old Five coffee Vanya ordered him a cafe au le and herself a latte and headed over with their appropriate beverages.

Five was scowling as soon as Vanya handed him the mug.

“There’s milk in this,” he grumbled petulantly.

“Yes,” Vanya said with a shrug. “There’s coffee in it too which is more than you’ll get if you asked Luther, Diego, or Allison.”

Five scowled even harder and took a sip of his coffee.

“Klaus would let me have coffee,” Five muttered mutinously.

Vanya snorted. “He probably would, but Klaus has no money to buy coffee and is probably having sex with Dave at this very moment. If you want to ask him next time you have my blessing.”

The look of absolute disgust that washed over Five’s face was enough to make Vanya want to double over laughing but held herself back only because she knew Five would get pissy if he thought she was mocking him. Instead she changed the subject.

“So what are you working on that needs caffeine?”

Five shrugged dismissively. 

“Some of dad’s old papers, it's all shorthand and dad had terrible handwriting so it's like trying to break a code in a made up language and the person writing made a lot of mistakes and its exhausting mentally.”

Vanya hmmed in sympathy and took another sip of her latte.

“I think you should give me a new name,” Five said suddenly.

Vanya choked on her drink and set the mug down as she coughed.

“I thought you didn’t want one?” Vanya wheezed as soon as she was taking in enough air to voice the question.

And what a brouhaha  _ that _ had been at the time. Five refusing a name saying one picked by a machine was just as meaningless as a number anyway and he was used to being Five and he didn’t want to change it now.

Five wouldn’t meet her eyes, staring into his mug as if it held a particularly interesting formula he was trying to memorize.

“I didn’t want one that mom would give me,” he said tightly still not making eye contact. “I didn’t want to give dad the satisfaction of knowing that having a number for a name bothered me.”

Vanya felt her stomach drop.

“ _ Does _ it bother you?”

Five wrinkled his nose. “Not for the reasons it bothered everyone else,” he said dismissively. “I don’t find it demeaning like Diego did, but now that dad’s gone I don’t have to make a point of not caring about his arbitrary numbers.”

Vanya’s throat was so dry with nerves it clicked when she swallowed but she forced herself to speak.

“When I was researching what our names meant I found a name that reminded me of you,” she said cautiously.

Five’s eyes flicked up to hers for a moment before quickly looking back at his coffee.

“Oh?” Five asked faux casual, as if Vanya hadn’t just seen relief warring with fear in his eyes.

“How do you feel about the name Kit?”

Five pursed his lips in a way that Vanya knew meant he was fighting a smile.

“I suppose it’s acceptable,” he said dryly and Vanya let her face slip into a wide grin.

Vanya set down her coffee and brushed her right hand through the hair that was always falling into his eyes.

“Glad to earn your approval Kit.”

Her brother’s answering smile was small, but akin to watching a beam of sunshine peak out from behind a cloud.

* * *

On the way back to the car they passed a pet store and Kit stopped in front of a window display of puppies.

Vanya stopped with her hands in her pocket as she watched her little brother become entranced by the small wiggling golden bodies lolling about in the sunlit window.

“Can I get a dog?” Kit asked without taking his eyes off the puppies.

Vanya arched an eyebrow in surprise; they had never been allowed pets as children, in fact their father had once killed a baby bird she’d been attempting to nurse back to health in front of her to make a point, but Five had never showed interest in animals before.

He was certainly interested now; his eyes were intensely focused on one particularly chubby puppy as it waddled around the enclosure.

Vanya imagined what the others would say when they get back and find out Vanya has given their thirteen year old brother coffee, a name, and a puppy in under an hour and can’t help the wide grin that breaks over her face.

“Sure, why not?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gave Little Five a name! And a dog! Don't worry about Big Five; we'll get to him soon I promise! Please! Leave! A! Comment! I will be taking suggestions and ideas for this fic, so if there is something you would like to read or an idea you would like to explore let me know! I am the-rainbow-spoon-incident2 on tumblr if you want to be anonymous!


	4. Golden Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hargreeves children get some catharsis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No victim blaming in my house, and no Luther hate here okay?

**Anita**

Anita Cochran smiled encouragingly at Luther Hargreeves, the man in question sitting hunched over in the large wingback chair she kept near the window. For such a big man he was incredibly soft spoken and hesitant around her. In fact had barely spoken at all during his first three sessions with her the past month.

Vanya had asked her if she would be able to take two of her brothers for sessions without a conflict of interest.

“I only ask because you already know about the time travel and the powers and the whole Hargreeves bullshit and I can’t bear to ask Luther or Kit to have to explain that to someone who doesn’t already know,” Vanya had asked with wide pleading eyes.

And so Anita now had three of the Hargreeves children in therapy sessions with her. It was...something.

“I don’t want to talk about my father,” Luther suddenly burst, his left leg bouncing with nervous energy. He wouldn’t look her in the eye. As soon as the words left his mouth his eyes began darting around as if he was expecting to be punished for this boundary.

“Alright,” Anita said peaceably before Luther could work himself into fit. “Would you like to talk about your garden? It sounded like you had quite a bit of work ahead of you.”

Luther nodded his eyes darting to her face before falling back to his folded hands.

“I had an umbrella plant when I was on the moon,” Luther said softly to his lap. “It was the only living thing up there besides me for four years.” Luther swallowed thickly but still didn’t meet Anita’s gaze. “I thought it would be nice to plant it somewhere where it had more room to grow.”

“And it all snowballed from there?” Anita asked encouragingly.

Luther nodded.

“Mom kept an herb garden but that was it except for the oak tree in the courtyard,” Luther said with an almost imperceptible flinch.

“Trees can be lovely,” Anita said carefully. “But I’ve always been partial to shrubs myself. They don’t get enough love, people think they’re boring because they don’t have flowers to smell or branches to climb.”

Anita rolled her eyes to show what she thought of other people’s opinions on her beloved shrubs and smiled at Luther again.

“You were planning to start with some root vegetables and small flowers first right?”

“Yeah, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, and marigolds to start off. I figure they can’t be too hard right?”

Anita smiled at him.

“I’m sure you’re more than up to the challenge Luther. Tell me more about the greenhouse you’ve been planning.”

Luther smiled softly as he began to outline his plans for a small greenhouse in a corner of the courtyard.

* * *

“Thank you for sharing that with me,” Anita said twenty minutes later to a far more relaxed Luther Hargreeves.

“Oh,” he said awkwardly, running a hand through the short hair on the back of his head. “You’re probably used to people coming to you with real problems, not gardening plans.” He sounded embarrassed suddenly, as if he’d just realized how long he had been talking.

Anita cocked her head to the side and held Luther’s gaze.

“You wouldn’t believe the number of things I’ve talked to ‘people with real problems’ about,” Anita said with a sad smile. “People with real problems don’t always want to talk about their problems; sometimes they want to talk about their poetry class, or their favorite arcade game. They want to talk about things that help them deal with their problems rather than about their problems directly. It helps sometimes when people aren’t ready to talk about their abuse, but at the same time know that they need help.”

Luther’s mouth had fallen slightly open and he gaped at her like a fish while she spoke but at her last sentence he began to shake his head.

“No, I--I wasn’t abused. Not like the others, you know what happened to Vanya, with the pills dad forced her to take, and the way he encouraged the rest of us to treat her. Or Klaus, making him so afraid of his powers that he tried to get rid of them. I was just...” Luther trailed off, unsure of what to say.

“Just given the impossible task of pleasing a man who didn’t care one way or the other if you or your siblings were happy or even safe. Sounds like abuse to me.” 

Luther’s bottom lip wobbled and he clenched his fists tightly in his lap again.

“Why couldn’t I tell?” He gasped out suddenly. “All the others could tell, they ran out like their lives depended on it, but I just couldn’t see that he didn’t care until after he was dead.”

“You didn’t want to see, you were the golden child and you held out hope that if you did everything exactly right you would be able to win your father’s affection. And sometimes just being given his attention made you think all your suffering was worth it. And then it all came crumbling down.”

Luther swallowed thickly before looking down at his lap.

“Why did he hate me so much? Why did he send me to the moon for no reason? Why didn’t--” Luther cut himself off with a choked sob and pressed his hand to his lips to muffle the noise.

“Why?!” He all but wailed. “Why wasn’t I enough? Why was nothing I did ever enough?!”

“Because winning the affection of a narcissist is impossible,” Anita said kindly but with a firmness he had come to expect when Anita spoke to him. “You are not a failure for not completing a task that, by its very nature, was impossible to win. You were a very good son to a very bad father and your abuse was not your fault, and definitely not something you deserved.”

Sitting in the wingback chair in Anita Cochran’s office Luther Hargreeves let himself cry until he felt wrung out, but unlike his breakdown at the Academy when he’d found all his unopened research, this felt like a release instead of a meltdown.

* * *

**Luther**

There were sixteen single gallon cans of paint sitting innocuously next to the six five gallon buckets at the base of the stairs with no one in sight when Luther had arrived back home after his latest therapy session.

Hm.

Allison was in LA, seeing her own therapist (and doing what she had to do to be allowed to see her daughter again), Kit was in the courtyard trying to training his puppy a series of tricks, Klaus and Dave were on a date, Diego was at a boxing match, and Ben was...currently incorporeal, so that left two options. Seven or Five. Frankly, Luther had no fucking clue.

About one minute later Vanya bounced down the stairs and spotted Luther staring at the paint trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

“Hello Luther,” Vanya said with a jaunty wave before grabbing two cans of paint and heading back up the stairs.

Huh...Vanya was carrying paint cans up the stairs.

Luther wasn’t sure what about it confused him more, the fact that Vanya hadn’t bothered to use her powers to carry the heavy load for her or the fact that she had enough upper body strength to manage the full paint cans on her own.

Luther stood at the foot of the stairs and waited for her to come back and grabbed two more cans and turned to head back upstairs.

“What are you doing?”

The question was out of Luther’s mouth before he could even consider how accusing _that_ was going to sound, and he didn’t mean it that way, _he didn’t,_ it was just how he sounded.

Vanya standing three steps up and for once eye level with Luther didn’t look upset. If anything she looked positively giddy.

“I’m redecorating! Come and see!” And with that she bounded off back up the stairs.

Luther blinked a few times before shrugging and grabbing two of the buckets of paint.

Upstairs in the old dormitory hallway Vanya has laid out several yards of plastic sheeting on the floor and stacked paint trays and rollers and brushes in the corner. The walls themselves have been bared of the education posters that have been on display for almost thirty years and the walls themselves wiped down with a wet rag.

Vanya has just stacked the two cans she has brought with her on a slowly growing pyramid of paint cans when she turned to face Luther with a smile on her face.

“Excellent! Can you put those over by the paint trays?”

Luther carefully set the two buckets down and stared at the small dot of paint on top of both buckets designating the color within. Black. He turned back to the pile of paint cans Vanya was straightening out and looked at the red, the blue, the green, the yellow, the purple, the orange dots that marked the cans and frowned in confusion.

“What color were you going to paint the wall?”

Luther asked with mounting confusion as Vanya arranged the cans more neatly.

“All of them eventually,” Vanya said with a shrug. “But black first, like a canvas, and then I’ll use the other colors to make abstract art. You like?”

Luther considered the question. With the walls painted black all the other colors would pop with even the smallest amount of illumination. Luther could picture all the colors Vanya had picked up on the walls spiraling, swirling and twirling around each other, almost like a flower garden.

“Would you mind if I helped?”

Vanya’s answering smile could almost be called predatory.

* * *

Dave and Klaus held hands the entire way back to the Academy after their movie/dinner date and not one person batted an eye. In fact one particularly tiny old lady had even smiled at them when they got on the bus. They didn’t have to hide what they were doing from the law, they got to go hold hands in public, and they were planning on getting married the very next month, as soon as Pogo could produce documentation for Dave. His sisters (who had taken a lot of convincing on the part of their parents back in 1969) had been over the moon to talk with him again and were planning on flying in for the wedding. It was more than Dave had ever let himself ask for.

“I think Vanya’s stalling,” Klaus said as the Academy came into view up the street.

“Huh?” Dave, who’d quite honestly been lost in a rather pleasant daydream about standing with Klaus under a Chuppah, took a minute to process what Klaus had said.

“I think Vanya’s stalling, with the house hunting,” Klaus said with a shrug that somehow managed to incorporate his entire body. “I’m not sure if she’s even aware of it but I think she really wants to stick it to daddy dearest’s memory by making the house belong to us after everything we went through.”

Dave pulled up short.

“Are you saying she wants to stay in the Academy? She hates the place as much as you do babe.” Klaus just shrugged and Dave found himself becoming almost hysterical. “Her childhood prison is in the basement, why would she want to stay?!”

Klaus laughed and shook his head, his curls catching the light of the setting sun.

“Trust me, I’m wildly aware of how fucked up it is, but that’s just how we all are as people. It's just...the Academy was always dad’s domain, and I can totally see V wanting to stake a claim, ya know? Seeing as he took so much from her, this could be a way of reclaiming her agency.”

“That’s actually really insightful. What brought it on?” Dave asked with a raised brow.

Klaus looked mock offended. “I am a highly sensitive individual and I know Vanya better than anyone else!”

Dave kept his eyebrow exactly where it was.

Klaus shrugged. “Ben said she was playing her violin like it had personally offended her and then in a fit of temper she went outside and had Kit’s puppy pee on where we dumped dad’s ashes.” Dave couldn’t help it, he snorted at that and Klaus beamed at him before continuing.

“Vanya’s feelings, now that she has a full range of them, are not exactly subtle.”

Dave snorted and resumed walking, pulling Klaus along with him.

“Do you want to find our own place if Vanya decides to stay?”

“Nope,” Klaus said with a pop of his lips. “If Vanya is going to be waging war on Reginald Hargreeves’s memory and atrocious decorating sense I want a front row seat for that spectacle,” and with a flounce Klaus opened the front door of the Umbrella Academy.

Upon entering the front door of the Academy Dave and Klaus are treated to Whitney Houston's belting voice coming from the second floor.

This alone was not unusual; Luther loved preppy 80’s pop music and loved to listen to it at high volume on his record player so everyone else could hear it too. What was unusual was that there were at least four other voices singing along with her at the top of their lungs.

Dave and Klaus shared one bemused look before Klaus started at a jog towards the noise.

In his thirty years on earth Klaus Hargreeves had seen some really weird shit. He was even pretty sure he’d seen things stranger than what he saw when he rounded the last corner on that Tuesday afternoon six weeks after the Apocalypse that wasn’t, but he could call them to mind. The hallway (which had definitely been a very ugly yellowish brown contrasted with a faded maroon wainscoting when he had left the Academy just before noon) had been painted black and every person with the last name Hargreeves still in town was having a go with the colored paint.

At the far end of the hallway Grace (who had put on an apron and covered her hair with a scarf) was smiling as she painted purple swirls around Allison’s door. Diego, bobbing his head along with the music was apparently experimenting on what paint looked like when you wielded the brush like a knife. Further down the hallway and sitting back to back Luther and Vanya had reached opposite extremes in techniques,Vanya had taken several brushes dipped in different color paints and just started flicking them towards the wall, creating constellations of color; Luther with his intense focus was very carefully painting what looked like a delicate gold chain that Klaus realized were actually words. Both Fives were there too, flitting around sporadically painting with wild unpredictable strokes, picking up new brushes every few Jumps. (Unseen until Klaus arrived, Ben was sitting on the floor giggling as he watched his siblings play.)

It was all so fucking wholesome, Klaus couldn’t help but laugh. Everyone looked up at the noise and smiled or waved, but it was Kit who with a blue flash of light skidded towards them on fuzzy socked feet brandishing two trays of paint at them.

“Vanya says we’re having sibling bonding time, so that means you have to help too,” Kit said very imperiously waving the tray of yellow paint in Dave’s direction. “Ben gets a pass since you can’t make him solid yet, so he’ll have to critique our work when we’re done.”

Klaus, already reaching for the green paint, was smiling so wide his cheeks hurt.

“You got it baby bro,” Klaus said before dipping his fingers into the bright paint and slathering them on the wall.

Kit rolled his eyes at the nickname, but he was smiling ever so slightly when he jumped back to where he’d been before, so Klaus decided to take it as a win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment below! I crave validation! Next chapter will be Older Five getting a name!


	5. Ivy Covered Walls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Names (and puppies) are important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've had a hard time with this chapter, and I'm really hoping it comes across as uplifting as I meant for it to be.

Vanya Hargreeves parked her father’s classic car as quietly as she could in the garage and moved quickly before anyone could trap them in the small space. She and Kit weren’t sneaking around, per se; that would imply that they had something to be ashamed of. No, they were just strategically avoiding their family in order to get the maximum impact with their surprise.

“Will you be good down here for a little while?” Vanya asked Kit once they closed the kitchen door behind them and Kit set his puppy down so she could shake herself out.

Kit leveled a very judgmental look in her direction. “I’m not a baby,” Kit said with the sort of indignation only a teenager can manage. “I can handle the others till you get back.”

Vanya couldn’t help but smile at the tone, she’d missed that snarky attitude of his.

“Alright,” she said, holding up her hands in surrender. “Just take her outside if she starts to--”

“I _know,_ Vanya!” Kit said petulantly and Vanya laughed once, picked up the carrier on the floor and bounded up the stairs with it.

* * *

Five was firmly ensconced in his preferred comfortable red armchair in the library when Vanya plopped into the seat beside him.

“So I would like to state for the record that I wasn’t the one who told him about your wife,” Vanya said without preamble, folding her hands over her lap and fixing Five with a smirk. The same smirk she’d worn when planning mischief when they were children.

_Oh dear._

Five sighed deeply, carefully placed the bookmark between the pages and set the book down on the small table between them.

“Alright, I’ll bite. You didn’t tell _who_ about Delores?” Five asked with affected casualness.

Vanya’s mischievous smile grew wider. “Kit,” she said, mirth making her eyes twinkle.

Five felt his forehead wrinkle in confusion.

“Kit? Who the hell is Kit?”

* * *

Allison Hargreeves was in a bit of a mood. She’d spent a good half an hour scouring the Academy for Vanya when she almost walked straight into Klaus who was wearing nothing but a towel and attempting to comb his sopping wet hair out of his eyes.

“Hey Alleycat,” Klaus said with a quick flash of his ‘Hello’ hand. “What’s got you in a tizzy?”

“Do you know where Vanya is? I’ve been looking everywhere for her.”

“‘Fraid not!” Klaus said with a smile as he rocked back on his heels. “I’ve been attempting to drown out the ghosts for the better part of the day and I wasn’t really paying attention to where anyone else was going today.”

“She took Little Five for coffee.”

Klaus whirled around at the sound of Ben’s voice down the hall, his ghostly brother leaning against the wall, Allison fixing on the wrong patch of empty air trying to spot her brother.

“Said he needed caffeine, but I think he just wanted an excuse to get out of the house.”

And that had been that.

* * *

Allison had very limited experience dealing with Five in a one on one setting. As children she’d been baffled by his closeness with Vanya and as a teenage she’d been irritated with his haughty attitude (her own ego didn’t like being upstaged by anyone) and as an adult she hadn’t really been alone with him in the week leading up to the Apocalypse that wasn’t. If adult Five was a complete mystery, teenage Five never seemed to do what she expected either.

Case in point:one of the last things she expected to see in the kitchen was teenage Five sitting at the table with a puppy in his lap, Mom bent over at the waist to draw a delicate finger down the puppy’s snout.

“She’s lovely, dear,” Mom was saying as Five beamed like a proud mother.

Allison’s brain stalled for a moment before what she was seeing caught up to her brain.

“Five! What the hell? Ben said you and Vanya left for coffee, where did you get a dog?”

Five rolled his eyes and kept petting the dog in his lap. “We did get coffee, then we stopped by a pet store, also that’s not my name anymore Allison. I’m Kit now.”

The wind went out of Allison’s sails rather abruptly.

“What?”

“Kit, my name is Kit,” Five said, staring Allison dead in the eye.

“I thought you didn’t want a name,” Allison said slowly, staring at Five like she’d never seen anything quite like him before.

“I didn’t before, no offence mom,” Five--Kit said with a glance at Grace (who was positively beaming). “But I wanted one now that Dad’s gone and I knew Vanya had done the most research on names when we were kids.”

Allison had to bite back the response that Fi--Kit _was_ still a child, when he suddenly stood up and grabbed a tennis ball from the bag at the end of the table.

“Mom and I were going to go outside, would you like to join us?” Kit asked with a raised eyebrow, and Allison, knowing this would be the best offer she’d get from him, took the ball from his outstretched hand.

“Does she know how to play fetch?” Allison asked curiously.

Kit shrugged. “Let's find out.”

* * *

“He asked me to give him a name,” Vanya said, her voice filled with a soft sort of reverence.

“I was wondering when he’d get the nerve up,” Five said with something a lot like wistfulness in his voice.

“You knew he’d ask for one?” Vanya asked sharply, her eyes narrowing as she watched Five shrug dismissively.

“I know I’d been planning on asking you for one when I was that age,” Five said casually, as if this wasn’t one of the biggest bombs that had been dropped on Vanya’s head in the past week.

“You were?” Vanya said with her eyebrows suddenly much closer to her hairline than they’d been a moment ago. “I thought it was just because he didn’t want to share his Number with anyone, not even another version of himself.” Vanya said carefully.

Five shook his head. “No, I was waiting for the right moment to ask, to make it clear to dad I wasn’t doing this because my Number bothered me, but because I was more than what he’d made of me. That I’d grown beyond his reach.”

He sounded so disparaging of his own logic that Vanya frowned.

“Well,” she began slowly. “It might not have happened the way you thought it would but you definitely grew past his visions for you Five.”

The corner of Five’s lips turned up in a smile. “So you would have called me Kit?”

Vanya nodded. “It was one of the names I researched and thought might fit you back then. It was the first one that popped into my head when he asked.”

“And what about me?” Five asked, leaning back so he could peer down his nose in mocking imperiousness. “What name fits me now?”

“Rowan,” Vanya said almost without thinking. “The name Rowan fits you now.”

Five looked surprised for a moment before he seemed to weigh the name in his head. “Rowan, I suppose I could live with that.”

Vanya felt like a balloon had been inflated inside her chest and was about to open her mouth to say something incredibly sappy when Rowan’s face clouded over with confusion.

“Wait, what did you tell him about Delores?”

Vanya blinked a few times before her mind caught up to where Rowan’s mind had jumped to.

“Oh, me? Nothing,” Vanya said with a smile. “Which makes what happened on our way back from the coffee shop all the more interesting.”

There is something about her smile that speaks to such mischief that for a brief moment Rowan would swear he could smell bananas.

“Oh,” he said cautiously. “What happened?”

“We passed by a pet store and they had some puppies in the window and Kit wanted one,” Vanya said, her calm voice belying the smile still spreading her lips. “So we went in and the salesperson let him play with them to see if any of them were drawn to him, and he ended up getting a little girl puppy that he named: Delores.”

Rowan spluttered. “And you didn’t think to discourage this?”

“Nope!” Vanya said with a smile that showed her teeth. “But I did do something else.”

Rowan narrowed his eyes at his favorite sibling (she still held the ranking but she was on thin fucking ice). “What did you do?”

“Go look in the hallway,” Vanya said, leaning further back into the soft red leather of her chair.

Rowan, still scowling fit to curdle milk, got up and cautiously made his way to the library door. Vanya knew the moment he found what she had left there.

“You got a dog?” Rowan asked incredulously.

“No,” Vanya called back easily. “I got you a puppy because it reminded me of you.”

“Because I’m so fat and sleepy,” Rowan asked sarcastically, as if Vanya could not hear his heart speed up with excitement and the carrier door open with almost unseemly haste.

Rowan can back into the library holding the small golden puppy in his arms, the puppy seemed quite pleased with this arrangement and gazed up at Rowan adoringly. Despite his earlier protest there was silence for a few minutes as Rowan gently scratched his puppy under the chin.

“I’m going to name him Mr. Pennycrumb. See you later Vanya,” Rowan said decisively before doing an about face and heading out of the library.

* * *

The sound of Allison’s laughter ricocheted off the stone of the courtyard’s walls and Luther felt himself smile in response. Allison had had so many different laughs as a child, the high trilling laugh she gave to the press when she wanted their attention, the soft chuckles Ben and Klaus would sometimes earn with their antics, the cackle she would give when they snuck out to Super Star and she bowled a strike, but his favorite had always been the deep unrestrained belly laugh he alone seemed to be able to call forth.

Luther looped the small trowel back onto its peg in the old garden shed and headed outside to see what had made Allison so happy. When he turned the corner he saw Little Five trying and mostly failing to teach a chubby chocolate brown puppy to play fetch with a tennis ball, and Luther couldn’t help it, he laughed too.

Allison turned and waved him over as Five waved his hand dismissively in Luther’s direction before focusing completely on the puppy.

“C’mon Delores, do you want to play with the ball?” Little Five asked, waving the aforementioned ball in front of the puppy’s face.

The puppy looked at the ball, then up at Five, and then jumped into his lap to chew very softly at Five’s sleeve.

“I don’t think she wants to fetch,” Allison says, pressing her lips together to keep from laughing as their brother carefully tried to extricate his sleeve from the puppy’s mouth.

“I think there’s some rope in the shed if you wanted to give tug-of-war a go,” Luther offered once Five had freed his sleeve.

“Might as well,” Five mutters as he stands and heads towards the shed, the puppy Delores trailing in his wake.

Once Five is out of earshot Allison turns to him with a sad smile on her face.

“Vanya took him for coffee and ended up giving him a dog and a name,” Allison said in a rush of breath.

Luther blinks in surprise.

“I thought he didn’t want a name,” is all Luther can think to say to that pronouncement.

Allison is still smiling sadly when she answers him. “That’s what I thought too, but one of the first things out of his mouth was a request to be called Kit so I’m going to say that we were wrong in our assumptions about him. Maybe even back when we were kids, but it’s really rather moot now.”

Luther felt his brow wrinkle in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Allison began slowly, “That the version of Five we remember from our childhood is probably less accurate than it should be.”

* * *

Dave Katz had never painted anyone’s nails before but Klaus didn’t seem to mind that they had turned out a bit messy.

“They’re fine babe,” Klaus said with a roll of his eyes. “I’m going to put glitter over them anyway so the base coat doesn’t need to be perfect.”

“If you say so,” Dave said, staring at Klaus’s nails dubiously.

Klaus kissed him on the cheek and was just reaching for the bottle of glitter for the top coat when Ben burst into Klaus’s room with a huge smile splitting his face.

“Klaus you have got to go to the courtyard right now,” Ben said in a rush, skidding to a halt in the middle of Klaus’s room.

Klaus’s hands glowed slightly blue as he stood up quickly. “Why what’s happening?”

“Vanya bought Five a puppy! And gave him a name!” Ben said through his smile.

Klaus couldn’t help it, he snorted with laughter and was terribly grateful to Dave for being able to ask the truly important questions.

“Which Five?” Dave asked with a smile quickly spreading across his face.

“Both of them!” Ben all but crowed with delight.

“She bought them both puppies and gave them names?” Klaus asked through his laughter.

“Yep!” Ben said with a huge smile. “The one that’s thirteen is Kit, and the one that’s fifty-eight is Rowan, and last I checked everyone besides Diego was down in the courtyard playing with the puppies.”

“Oh,” Klaus wheezed as he started moving towards the door, “This, I have _got_ to see.”

* * *

When Diego Hargreeves arrived at the Academy that evening it was to find his entire family in the courtyard eating burgers and chips in the courtyard and playing with a pair of dogs in the light of the Tiki torches someone had set up along the perimeter.

“Diego, mi hermano!” Klaus shouted when he spotted Diego standing in the doorway with his mouth agape. “You missed a busy day!”

“What the fuck?” Was all he managed before a small brown puppy ran up to him and started chewing on his shoelaces. “I’ve been gone less than six hours!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT!!!!! Questions and requests are both welcome and I will literally become a puddle of goo if you give me compliments. For the anon request from Tumblr I love your suggestion for a Vanya and Pogo interaction and I love the idea for Diego&Vanya music bonding time so I'll try and work that into future chapters.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a comment? Please?


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